We are writers, we have story ideas--we can agree on this, yes? :) And in some way, we generally like to hold on to those ideas for future use.

Me, I mostly go the standard route. Carry a notebook with me everywhere, when one fills up, it goes into my notebook box and I start a new one. Unfortunately, this method has its downsides. Yes, I have all my ideas written down. No, I do not enjoy paging through notebook after notebook trying to find that one page where I distantly remember writing that great first paragraph or those insightful character notes.

To try to combat this, I started using my trusty index cards for more than just outlining. I have a bunch of them with the major ideas I've come up with in the last few years (i.e., the ones I've come back to more than once and keep thinking about), which I keep in a box like this. I even numbered my notebooks, and wrote which notebooks had notes on each idea on that idea's card.

However, that only works so well. Because sometimes I want to go back and find notes on one of the many ideas that were not big enough that I filled out an index card on them. Or that weren't all that big at the time, but I find myself thinking about them again and maybe they could use an index card... if I could find those first notes. I suppose I could go through all my notebooks and write every single idea on its own index card, but I fear then I might have almost just as hard a time finding anything in my little box. I might need more than one box! I have a lot of little bits and pieces of ideas.

I may end up doing that at some point, when I have a nice long stretch of free time. In the meantime, I'm curious--how do the rest of you keep track of your ideas? Any of you have some excellent method I can steal? :D

Current Mood: curious

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I'm not very organized in that regard, but I do keep word files going with ideas so I don't lose them. If it's an idea to a WIP I might add it to a word file with notes on that text or scrawl it on the latest draft or write a private blog entry to transfer to the word file later.

Most of the ideas that I do have are old ideas from when I was in grade 10-12. Now, when I get ideas, I put them in livejournal posts. I'm probably going to start tagging them so I can find them easily.

I'm the worst person to ask. I don't tend to write down my ideas. I let them go swirly in my head for a few years until I finally get down to the task of writing. I've lost more ideas than I care to count, this way, but most of them are so half-formed anyway, that I need them to mix with other ideas before they become anything worth pursuing.

Yeah, I let the ideas "go swirly" for a while, too (I like to call it "letting them percolate"), I just tend to jot down any particularly sparkly bits. Which can mean I have notes for one idea spread out through three different notebooks. :P

That's why I don't write them down. I can't be bothered to wade through scraps of papers and various notebooks to actually find the ideas. I actually do have some lined journals filled with ideas, but they're more archaeological oddities than practical storage. The only thing that's ever made it out of one of these journals was a scene from my latest novel, which was the only thing that survived when the novel originally died in diskette wipe disaster four years ago. That scrap saved the novel.

Two-pocket folders, one for each WiP. I tuck everything in there -- printed-out research notes, index cards, restaurant receipts on which I have scribbled bits of dialogue, etc. If it starts to overflow, I get another two-pocket folder of the same color and separate the notes into "Research" and "Story".

My folder for KNIFE is green; my folders for TOUCHING INDIGO (and they are stuffed to bursting at the moment -- I might have to start a third folder) are blue.

Heh. I tend to remember the ideas that really work (that's how I know I want to go looking for them), but once I start working out details... The details I forget. Sometimes I even forget details about the story I'm in the middle of writing. So I make lots of notes and lists and stuff. :)

Like Saundra I remember all the basic ideas if they're good. Sometimes I sit down to work out specifics and I just have a plotting notebook for that...plotting is always deliberate, so it's easy to keep everything in one notebook. (Although I have sometimes had conversations with Dade or something and failed to write it down...)

I have files on my computer for different proto-projects. I write things down on scraps of paper when I think of them, stuff them in my purse, and then later on I either copy them into the file for the project, or if they are for something new and it's just a tiny idea, I put them into a separate "tidbits" file. Occasionally I go trolling through the tidbits file to see if anything sparks out at me as something I could add to a current project (or in case something suddenly explodes from a tidbit to a full-fledged plot or character concept).

And I have a small notebook that fits in my purse that I've been using for the past few weeks to record notes on the pirate book, since that's what I've been obsessing over the most (that is, until last night when an entirely different story walked into my brain, unbidden).